Mary Merkenich, Melbourne
On March 3, Victorian public school teachers and their colleagues from the Catholic school system will stop work for one day. This collaborative action is unprecedented and is a sign of the desperation that teachers feel about their working conditions.
Thirteen months ago, the Australian Education Union (AEU), representing public school teachers, presented a log of claims to Premier Steve Bracks' Labor government. After stalling negotiations with the AEU until six months ago, the education department's negotiators have refused to discuss any claims that will cost the government any money.
Department negotiators initially offered only a 2.5% increase in pay for teachers. Then they offered to increase this to 3% if teachers gave up one week of their annual leave.
The mainstream media has almost entirely focussed on the AEU's claim for a 10% pay increase over one year. However, most teachers are stopping work on March 3 for the other issues in the log of claims that they regard as essential. These include adequate funding to state schools, so that class sizes and teachers' workloads can be reduced.
Many teachers work anything up to 50 hours a week. Much of this is unpaid overtime. If teachers did not do this unpaid work, schools simply wouldn't be able to operate.
Many young teachers are still employed only as contract workers, with very little job security. One of the ALP's election promises was to get rid of contract teaching. However, contract-teaching levels are currently the same as they were when the ALP won office in 1999.
Additionally, there is a teacher shortage, which is becoming more acute. By not adequately funding state schools, the state government is doing nothing to address understaffing. Moreover, the level of contract employment is another disincentive to becoming a teacher.
The government often boasts about having reduced class sizes and yet primary schools exist with classes of 38 pupils and secondary schools often have classes larger than 25.
Many older teachers regard the agreement under which teachers are currently working as a sell-out. Under that agreement, many schools were forced into choosing between offering their teachers a small improvement in their workload (and cutting back educational programs to do so), or denying even that small reduction in teacher work commitments.
Many teachers resigned from the AEU after it accepted the agreement. It is only since the latest campaign around the log of claims began, and the AEU has been seen to be doing something for its members, that membership has increased dramatically.
Reports from teachers around the state indicate that AEU members are telling their leaders they want the union to focus on the funding of schools, the reduction of workloads and the elimination of contract teaching. Any offer of a pay increase without real improvements in these other areas will not satisfy them.
The AEU leadership will be presenting a motion to a mass meeting at the Rod Laver Arena, which calls for a campaign of rolling stoppages in second term and a second strike in July.
Absent from the AEU leadership's motion is any provision for a ratification process that ensures the membership can decide when an offer from the government is good enough.
The current working conditions and inadequate funding stem from an agreement that was ratified by perhaps 500 AEU members at poorly attended delegates' meetings. The mass stopwork meetings, on the other hand, attract the most committed AEU members in numbers of up to 9000.
Teachers are in an excellent position to win their demands. Pressure will be mounting on the Bracks Labor government to make a deal with the AEU so as to avoid industrial action at a time when federal ALP leader Mark Latham is trying to present himself as a friend of public education. There is broad public sympathy for the teachers' campaign, because most people can see that the state school system is impoverished. Consequently, there is no need to grab at crumbs that the government may offer teachers.
Teachers owe it to themselves and their students to make sure that this campaign is a successful one.
[Mary Merkenich is a member of Teachers Alliance, a militant caucus in the AEU.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 3, 2004.
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